Archive

Why Flossing is Important

  A book about flossing your teeth? Really? I am a periodontist, which means I am a dentist with additional training in the diagnosis and treatment of gum diseases. Yes, some of it is pretty complicated, but not all of it. After years of study and after treating thousands of patients, I have come to […]

One Way to Check Out a Dental Practice

What’s the best way for people to find a high-quality dental practice? I think it begins by doing what you are doing right now — searching the Internet for ideas, suggestions and dental practices near you. To make a reasonable decision, you need to become fairly knowledgeable about two things. First, you need to know […]

Why Some Periodontists Use Lasers

This is a good video and describes why certain lasers work for gum disease and others do not. It also describes how periodontists like me have to work through the pros and cons of certain procedures before (1) deciding on additional training and (2) changing office procedures. Some periodontists have not moved to using lasers in […]

The Purpose of Anger

There is a purpose for anger and it isn’t to give me an excuse to break things. Anger can cause me to become aware of the fact that something is bugging me a lot. It might help me stop and ask myself what is going on? Where is this overwhelming emotion coming from? Ultimately anger might […]

Three Reasons You Might Want to See a Periodontist

A periodontist is a specialist in dentistry with advanced training in problems involving the tissues that surround the teeth. This includes things familiar to people, like the gums (its fancy name is gingiva) and bone; but also things most people outside of dentistry have never heard of, like cementum and periodontal ligament. To become a […]

Which came first, tooth loss or dementia?

If you aren’t brushing and flossing regularly, is it a memory thing? Or could it be that dental infections are affecting your memory? There is a new study out attempting to determine if a correlation exists between early-stage Alzheimer’s disease and tooth loss. The thinking is that inflammation originating in the mouth might be affecting […]

Dentist smokers advising smoking patients

At a hospital based dental school in Japan almost 1 dental instructor in 5 currently smokes. 15% are former smokers. A questionnaire was given out to 92 professionals (dentists, physicians, hygienists and nurses) asking about how they intervene with patients who smoke. The study found that only 25% of the current smoking patients were given […]

A Radically Different Way to Stop Smoking

I spoke about the reason I never became a smoker, and I owe it to my grandfather. Society attempts to modify behavior by passing laws. I have found that this does not reach the heart of the addiction. So watch this and tell me what you think.